Townley's the talk of the town!
By TMX Archives on 8th Mar 07
THE much feted supercross debut by Ben Townley may have been postponed a year due to major injury but it didn't take long for the former World MX2 champion to make his mark on the AMA series.
Last Saturday night, in front of over 50,000 fans inside St Louis' Edward Jones Dome, the New Zealander held strong through one of the toughest Lites class races in recent memory to claim his first of, presumably many, victories in only his second AMA supercross start.
It was a thrilling and memorable night all round in St Louis and, following the intense racing and spectacular crashes that punctuated the Lites main, the Super-cross class provided even more fireworks with Ricky Carmichael eventually taking the win after race leaders Chad Reed and James Stewart went down in an explosive incident early in the race that left both riders with a race long charge to make it back to the podium, and which spilled over into a shouting and fist waving match once the chequers had flown. Both parties blamed each other for the crash, but either way it sparked some intensity and excitement into the race and could make for some very interesting watching in the coming rounds.
The St Louis track design and soil were perfectly suited to close racing and the fans got it almost instantly as the gate dropped for the Super-cross class main.
AMP'D MOBILE AMA SUPERCROSS SERIES
RD 9 - EDWARD JONES DOME, ST LOUIS, MO
SUPERCROSS: 1 Ricky Carmichael (Suz), 2 James Stewart (Kaw), 3 Chad Reed (Yam), 4 Kevin Windham (Hon), 5 Nathan Ramsey (Yam), 6 David Vuillemin (Hon), 7 Paul Carpenter (Kaw), 8 Heath Voss (Hon), 9 Eric Sorby (Kaw), 10 Cole Siebler (Hon), 11 Kevin Johnson, 12 Jeff Gibson (Kaw), 13 Jacob Marsack (Kaw), 14 Kyle Lewis (Hon), 15 Michael Byrne (Suz).
SERIES STANDINGS (After 9 of 16 rounds): 1 Stewart 210, 2 Reed 191, 3 Ferry 149, 4 Windham 137, 5 Carmichael 116, 6 Byrne 114, 7 Voss 107, 8 Ivan Tedesco (Suz) 103, 9 Vuillemin 101, 10 Travis Preston (Hon) 97.
SUPERCROSS LITES: 1 Ben Townley (Kaw), 2 Ryan Morais (Yam), 3 Matt Goerke (Yam), 4 Mike Alessi (KTM), 5 Broc Tickle (Yam), 6 Darcy Lange (Kaw), 7 Jeff Alessi (KTM), 8 Ryan Sipes (Hon), 9 Zach Osborne (KTM), 10 Justin Brayton (Yam), 11 Tucker Hibbert (Yam), 12 Ricky Renner (Hon), 13 Kyle Tobin (Yam), 14 Billy Laninovich (Hon), 15 Justin Sipes (Kaw).
SERIES STANDINGS (After 2 of 7 rounds): 1 Morais 40, 2 Goerke 40, 3 Lange 37, 4 Dungey 28, 5 Brayton 26, 6 Osborne 26, 7 Townley 25, 8 Sipes 25, 9 J Alessi 22, 10 M Alessi 18.
Next Rd - March 9, Daytona International Speedway, Daytona, FL
For full report, results and pictures see T+MX NEWS, Friday, March 9, 2007.